I’m a member of the EAA, and just received this amazing video clip today in my e-mail from them. Freeman Army Airfield hosted an airshow in September 1945 of captured German aircraft, along with lots of American combat aircraft as well. All of the German aircraft still have their German markings in this video, although I’m pretty sure that the FE-xxxx buzz numbers on all of them were applied by the US. Anyways, see how many aircraft you can identify in this clip. You will be AMAZED at the types shown flying, as well as the types on display. There is actually a B-32, along some early German helicopters (I now know where the Kaman Husky got it’s design ideas from…). I wonder what happened to all of those pristine, FLYING aircraft? What’s really bad is I used to live in Indianapolis for quite a while (about an hour’s drive north of Seymour), and never knew this airfield existed until now. I definitely would have been down there taking pictures! Supposedly, there is an air museum there now.
Incidentally, Seymour, Indiana, is the hometown of John Cougar Mellencamp,
Great video, I wonder if any of those aircraft ended up over at the National Museum of the Airforce at Dayton. They have several of the types shown in the video. I read several of the bios on the Museum’s planes and they seem to have been acquired from all over. It could be hard to track where the planes in the video went. Rick
When I get some time, I’m gonna visit the website of the museum there in Seymour (I’m sure they have a website…right?), and see what else I can learn about the planes. I moved away from Indy back in 2006 after living there for almost 10 years, and just never knew about this airfield. Went through Seymour quite a bit when I lived there. I’ve gotta get back up there and visit this place.
During WWII the U.S. and the UK, as well as the Russians, had units that gathered captured enemy technology, such as aircraft and armour, for evaluation. They gathered as many “types” as they could and the U.S. sent them to the U.S. for evaluation and reverse engineering. I have been told that there are boxes of aircraft in storage, in Dayton, Ohio and Silver Springs, Maryland, waiting for restoration and display in museums. One said aircraft, a German Do335 was sent to Germany to be restored by Dornier. When it was being worked on the workers found that the ejection seat explosives were still in tact, as were the exploding bolts that eject the lower vertical stabilizer and the rear propeller (in the event of a wheels up landing). The DO335 was restored to like new condition and was on display in Germany. I do not know if it has been returned to the U.S. yet. Anybody? The same is true for armour and other weapons. After the war ended U.S. industrialists, like Henry Ford, were taken to Germany and given the oportunity to gather and take whatever they wanted. Ford was offered Volkswagen and refused it saying “it will not amount to anything”. Many of the bases that were closed in the cost cutting of 20+ years ago are now local airports and museums, e.g. Shanute Field AFB in Rantual IL. Shanute was a training base and had both pilot training as well as repair and maintanence training. A number of the “practice” aircraft are now on display. Thanks for the video.
I live just down the road a bit from Freeman Field. Supposedly there are parts of aircraft buried on the site somewhere and there is a team of people digging around trying to find them. My dad used to take me out to Freeman when I was a kid back in the 60s. I still remember those old hangers and barracks buildings that are all gone now. From what I remember there used to be a wing, I think from a FW-190, that used to be at one of the entrances to the base. From what a lot of people around here say, a lot of the captured aircraft was just scrapped and some of it went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. The old He-219 went to some storage facility in Maryland and is still there in a disassembled state I believe.
The Arado and the He-219 are also on display at Udvar Hazy (slthough the He-219 is still in a couple of pieces). I’m pretty sure that the JU-88 is at the Air Force Museum in Dayton.
I’m glad everyone liked it. I kinda wish I had lived way back then. But, digital cameras didn’t exist back then, either, and I would’ve gone mad trying to decide which planes to take pictures of with a measly roll of cheap film. How many were on a roll back in 1945? Heck, for all I know, I probably could not have afforded film (or a camera, for that matter!) anyways.
As rangerj stated, there was a considerable effort by the allied military to understand and develop new technology. The building where I work was specially constructed (by an Act of Congress!) during the war to study jet engine technology. There were captured German engines along with the latest British designs on test. The test cells still exist with remnants of fixturing. The program was assembled under the guise of compressor research.
Sadly, SPL as the bulding was later known (Special Projects Lab), is scheduled for demolition within the next few years.
In reading some of the aircraft bios at the Air Force Museum at Dayton. I noticed that they are indeed adding another 200,000 sq. ft. hanger to house the Presidential Aircraft Gallery, Space Gallery, and the Global Research Gallery. Oh, boy! The place already occupies over a million sq. ft. It has become more than a one day visit. I hope you all can get there one day. Rick
I am David Gray, Executive Director of the Freeman Field Recovery Team. We are in the process of excavating the remains of German, Italian, and Japanese aircraft which were disposed of during the Fall of 1946 at Freeman Army Airfield. Thank you for sharing the video of the 1945 Airshow here, it is indeed a wonderful and historic film. Modellers will note that many of the markings on the German aircraft are not accurate in the film, this is because many of the captured aircraft had their original markings painted over with temporary US markings, then had the German markings incorrectly re-applied in the States. The FE numbers on the aircraft stood for “Foreign Evaluation”. Later, these numbers were changed to T2 numbers for “Air Technical Intelligence” ie FE-1012 became T2-1012 and so on… If you would like to follow our team’s exploits and recovered items, please look for us on facebook under Freeman Field Recovery Team. Again, thanks for sharing the film, and I hope that you will enjoy following our adventure in Indiana.